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Solipsism
This page will detail my experience of solipsism syndrome, which might be relatively unique since I was consciously a solipsist from the age of my earliest memories. Background Solipsism in its "strongest" form is the belief that the self is the only reality and that all other reality, including the external world and other persons have no independent existence. It's kind of like The Matrix whereby your own mind is the only thing conscious in your entire universe, everything else is just a simulation and can never be proven to be real. "Solipsism Syndrome is a psychological state in which a person feels that the world is not external to their mind. Periods of extended isolation may predispose people to this condition." Childhood Thoughts As a young child (less than 4) I remember pondering that if I were never to travel to a certain city (say, Rome) and see it with my own eyes, then that city might very well not exist. I pictured that the most efficient way to trick me into believing "reality" would be to only bring into existence those things that I would one day interact with. So if I never go to Rome then the whole city may not exist and if I ever watched a movie filmed in Rome, then every single part of the city that the camera lens filmed might exist as lone islands of "reality" amongst a sea of "nothingness". I think my early childhood was marked by distinct feelings that I was truly alone in the world. In any case, this was a self-perpetuating belief, because by deciding that I could never know I wasn't alone, I allowed myself to accept being alone and this formed a pattern of rejection of intimacy that left me feeling completely alone in the world from my earliest memories up until now. Looking back, I think a lot of this comes from my Taurean need for physical intimacy, which in modern family's is only frequently shared between mother and child - hence my close relationship with my mother and more emotionally detached (though very close and harmonious) relationships with other family members. Overcoming "Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real." - Iris Murdoch. David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech three years prior to his suicide about controlling the way we perceive the world, lest it unconsciously control us. In it he addresses how natural solipsism is, and how difficult it is to overcome: "Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am '''the absolute centre of the universe'; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real."'' He uses an example of a crowded grocery store as a tense situation in which we can start to enter this solipsistic frame of mind where we are the victim, but offers an alternative: "If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, '''the mystical oneness of all things deep down'."'' The answer to solipsism is unity, spiritual monism, recognising that we are alone, but so is everyone else - consciousness is a subjective experience, or else it would have nothing to be conscious of. One implies the other, and hence solipsism necessitates oneness. Related "The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is noticed by others has shown to be uncommon. The reason behind the spotlight effect comes from the innate tendency to forget that although one is the center of one's own world, one is not the center of everyone else's." Links https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-have-solipsism-syndrome Category:Philosophy Category:Psychology Category:Childhood